2021 Honors Graduates

The Department of Economics is pleased to announce the following Honors graduates. These graduates have distinguished themselves academically and have demonstrated a desire to further their intellectual dialogue through original research in the field of Economics.

Message from Director of Honors Program

Dr. Stephen O'Connell

Junaid Ahmed

Committee: Stephen O'Connell, Mike Carr (Mathematics), Phillip Wolff (Psychology)

Title of Thesis: Can NLP Models Aid in Behavioral Economics Decision-making?

Carly Diaz

Committee: Nelson Lind, Kelli Lanier, Jeff Rosensweig (Goizueta Business School)

Title of Thesis: In USD We Trust: Is the Strength of the Safe-haven Effect on U.S. Dollars Dwindling?

Nikita Dsouza

Committee: Kelli Lanier, Evan Saltzman, Reshma Shah (Goizueta Business School)

Title of Thesis: Pinning Down Decision Preferences: Evaluating Role of Choice Architecture in Overcoming Choice Overload in Low-stakes Subjective Decision Settings

Danielle Handel

Committee: Krzysztof (Chris) Karbownik, Frank Lechner (Sociology), Victoria Powers (Mathematics)

Title of Thesis: The Effects of Natural Disasters on Infant Health: Evidence from India

Peter (Tun-Shuo) Lee

Committee: Kelli Lanier, Blake Allison, Manuela Manetta (Mathematics), Julio Medina (Dance)

Title of Thesis: One More Episode? An Analysis of Overconfident Behavior in Video-streaming Consumers

Phoebe Lei

Committee: Jeong Ho (John) Kim, Miguel R. Rueda (Political Science), Bree Ettinger (Mathematics)

Title of Thesis: Bond Fund Performance and Flows During the COVID-19 Crisis

Xinyue Qin

Committee: Jong H. Kim, Sue Mialon, Maria Franca Sibau (East Asian Studies)

Title of Thesis: The Impact of Immigration on U.S. Trade Deficit and Immigrants' Home Bias Effect

Ben Smith

Committee: Hugo Mialon, John Wegner (Environmental Sciences), Miguel R. Rueda (Political Science)

Title of Thesis: Cowboy and Spaceman: The Driving Forces of Energy and the Economic and Environmental Tradeoff

James Traynelis

Committee: Mi Luo, Paloma Moyano, Jeff Rosensweig (Goizueta Business School)

Title of Thesis: Filtered News Sentiments and U.S. Equities During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Julia van Helmond

Committee: Ian McCarthy, Sara Markowitz, Dana Haugaard (Visual Arts)

Title of Thesis: The Effect of Medicaid Expansion on the Accessibility of Facilities Offering Mental Health Services

Yuqi Wang

Committee: Kelli Lanier, Kaiji Chen, Wesley Longhofer (Goizueta Business School)

Title of Thesis: The Relationship between the Availability Heuristic and Trust in the Lens of the Black Lives Matter Movement

Benjamin Wiener

Committee: Krzysztof (Chris) Karbownik, Stephen O'Connell, Michael Kramer (Epidemiology)

Title of Thesis: Police Interventions and Birth Outcomes

Jianhao Zhang

Committee: Caroline Fohlin, Le Chen (Mathematics), Elena Pesavento

Title of Thesis: Index Spot-futures Arbitrage: Evidence from Examining S&P 500 Index and SPDR ETF